At 22:00 on March 15, the "Pritzker Architecture Prize", the highest honor in the architecture world, announced the 2022 winner. He is an architect, educator and architect born in Burkina Faso, one of the least developed countries in the world. Social activist Diebedo Francis Kér

"Francis Carlyle practiced pioneering architecture on land with extremely scarce resources - to promote the earth and its inhabitants. He is an architect and a devotee who has improved the living conditions and living experience of countless people in lands that are often forgotten by the world. Carlyle's His architectural works combine beauty, humility, boldness and innovation. With the perfect unity of architectural character and personal style, he firmly inherits the mission of the Pritzker Architecture Prize."

In 1965, Carlyle was born in Burkina Faso. Village Gando. It is located on the edge of the desert and has few resources. There is no clean drinking water, electricity and infrastructure, let alone buildings. The children in Gando have never seen a kindergarten or a playground. In order to survive, they started running for food and water at a very young age. If architecture first exists as a stable residence for human beings, then in Gando, this point is more prominently reflected in everyone’s life. In Carlyle’s childhood memories, the entire community was like a big family. People lived together and built houses together. A group of people sat tightly around the room to form a safe place. This was Carlyle’s initial interest in architecture. Perception.

Since there was no school in Gando, Carlyle had to leave the village at the age of seven and go to a city 20 kilometers away to study. From then on, he determined to build a school for his hometown in the future so that children could You can enjoy a comfortable learning environment within the community. Education indeed laid an important foundation for Carlyle's architectural career. In 1985, he used a scholarship to go to Berlin, Germany, for a work-study program: he learned how to build roofs and make furniture during the day, and studied secondary school courses at night. Ten years later, he entered the Technical University of Berlin and graduated with an advanced degree in architecture in 2004, when he was nearly 40 years old.

Carlyle's long-term living abroad did not make Carlyle forget the people of Gando. One of his first and most representative architectural works was the "Gando Primary School" (2001) that gave back to his hometown. In order to build a school with limited resources while ensuring that the building facilities can cope with the local hot temperatures and harsh lighting conditions, Carlyle used local materials and used the most common clay, reinforced with cement, to create bricks that can gather heat as building walls. and developed a high-performance and expressive architectural language tailored to local conditions, including double-skin roofs, ventilation towers, indirect lighting, cross-ventilation and sunshades (rather than traditional windows, doors and columns). The facility retains cool air inside while allowing heat to escape through brick ceilings and a wide suspended elevated roof, allowing for ventilation without the mechanical intervention of air conditioning.

What role does architecture play when resources are extremely scarce? This was a central issue that Carlyle explored in his architectural projects at Gando Primary School and later in various locations in Africa. He is deeply aware that architecture is inseparable from the land it is based on, and is also closely related to the users who live in it. In a place like Africa that values ​​a sense of community, architecture itself is a social event . Just being an architect is not enough. .Taking Gando Primary School as an example, the construction funds for the project all came from Carlyle's hard-earned funds internationally. During the project, he also played his role as an educator and social activist, training technical workers, and disseminating architectural concepts. Let the people of Gandor build and use it for themselves. Under his guidance, Gando Primary School was built almost entirely by local people from conception to completion, with everyone contributing their wisdom, labor and resources.

The success of Gando Primary School earned Carlyle the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004. He later added teachers' housing and a library complex to the primary school, and further expanded his model to surrounding areas, including building Opera Village (2010), Medical and Social Welfare Center (2014) in Laongo, Burkina Faso; Surgical Clinic and Medical Center in Léo (2014), Doctor Léo House (2019); Lycée in Koudouugou Schorge Secondary School (2016), Burkina Polytechnic (2020), etc. Carlyle continues to fulfill its role in a way that deeply respects place and tradition while bringing about change. As the jury said, his buildings "are built for the community, coexist with the community, and intuitively reflect all aspects of the community - from construction, material selection, planning to the characteristics of the community are integrated into the architecture." These works not only improve small villages appearance and residents' lives, and also create employment opportunities and train vocational skills for adults, thereby helping the community achieve stable development in the future.

's experience in construction in Africa has also influenced Carlyle's development in the Western world. Its works are distributed in Denmark , Germany, Italy, Switzerland , the United Kingdom and the United States. Carlyle did not follow the conventional practices of Western architects, but consciously drew imagination from African culture and injected it into Western architectural design. Due to Gando's long dry season and short but intense rainy season, the shelter of trees became particularly important, and these native elements became hallmarks of Carlyle's work.

For example, Sarbalé Ke, built for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (California, USA, 2019), was named after Carlyle’s native Pisa, meaning “House of Celebration”, and its design was inspired by the hollow baobab tree Inspired by the shape – in his homeland, the tree is revered for its medicinal properties; the central structure of the Serpentine Gallery (2017) in London, UK, also takes on the shape of the architect’s favorite tree, with a winding perimeter The zigzag, disconnected walls resemble African textiles, and the large cantilevered roof of is also the same as his buildings in Africa. Its funnel-shaped volume can collect rainwater to water the landscape green space, reminding people to pay attention to what is going on around the world. water shortages.

Carlyle believes that the difference between doing architecture in Western countries is that more mature technologies can be used to improve the building itself, but the core is still to serve people while minimizing costs, including economic and environmental costs. When it comes to architectural design specifically, he requires himself to use passive methods as much as possible and design with some ingenious and environmentally friendly engineering concepts, such as passive ventilation through appropriate openings to create a comfortable environment in the room. His creative use of indigenous materials, responses to climate issues, and unremitting attention and investment in vulnerable communities all remind us that it is imperative to change unsustainable production and consumption patterns.

"I hope that conventions and stereotypes will change, and people will have the courage to pursue their dreams and take risks. Rich people should not waste resources because of their wealth, and poor families should not give up trying to reshape their quality of life because of poverty," Carlyle said. , "Everyone deserves a quality life, and everyone deserves the opportunity to enjoy luxury and comfort. Individuals share weal and woe, and the climate environment, democratic issues, and resource scarcity are closely related to everyone."

Currently, Carlyle is conducting The project includes two historic parliamentary buildings. One is the National Assembly Building of Benin, which is currently in the advanced stage of construction; the other is the National Assembly Building of Burkina Faso, but construction has been temporarily suspended due to the current political instability in the country. .